With an increased interest in cell-specific drug testing, diagnosis, and other assays, systems that allow for individual cell isolation, identification, and retrieval are becoming more desirable within the field of cellular analysis. Furthermore, with the onset of personalized medicine, low-cost, high fidelity cellular sorting systems are becoming highly desirable. However, preexisting cell capture systems suffer from various shortcomings that prevent widespread adoption for cell-specific testing. For example, flow cytometry requires that the cell be simultaneously identified and sorted, and limits cell observation to the point at which the cell is sorted. Flow cytometry fails to allow for multiple analyses of the same cell within a single flow cytometry workflow, and does not permit arbitrary cell subpopulation sorting. Conventional microfluidic devices rely on cell-specific antibodies for cell selection, wherein the antibodies that are bound to the microfluidic device substrate selectively bind to cells expressing the desired antigen. Conventional microfluidic devices can also fail to allow for subsequent cell removal without cell damage, and only capture the cells expressing the specific antigen; non-expressing cells, which could also be desired, are not captured by these systems. Such loss of cell viability can preclude live-cell assays from being performed on sorted or isolated cells. Cellular filters can separate sample components based on size without significant cell damage, but suffer from clogging and do not allow for specific cell identification, isolation of individual cells, and retrieval of identified individual cells. Other technologies in this field are further limited in their ability to allow multiplex assays to be performed on individual cells, while minimizing sample preparation steps and overly expensive instrumentation.
Thus, there is a need in the cell sorting field to create new and useful systems and methods for isolating and analyzing cells, and the inventions disclosed herein provide such useful systems and methods.